


Kumonryu

by HeidernLion



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:34:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24605509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeidernLion/pseuds/HeidernLion
Summary: [OC Backstory / Roleplay / One-shot warm-up prose]The Kumonryu is a type of scaleless Koi with a pattern resembling white clouds on the black night sky. Like clouds, the pattern is constantly changing.Vachidei "Chi" Ejinn" is a wandering Xaela, accompanied by their talking otter companion, Quan. Regarded as one of the "Three Masters", they devote their life to learning, training, and sharing various martial arts styles of eastern Othard. Just as the changing patterns of the Kumonryu Koi, Chi is ever-changing, ever-shifting, never consistent. This piece, inspired by Lao Tzu and Dogen, reflects the sporadic nature of the duo at various points in time.





	Kumonryu

**Author's Note:**

> Featured OCs:  
> Vachidei "Chi" Ejinn  
> Quan the Otter  
> Ganbataar Ejinn  
> C'senija "Sena" Pahlo  
> Raquel Batiste  
> Swift Gazelle

Birds of the steppe sang melodies with the breeze, a chorus in tune with footsteps in grass. “What do you think of death, Quan?” poured the calm voice of a steel-skinned Xaela marked with white and blue scales bearing a resemblance to Hingan pottery, eyes meeting the beads of the tawny otter resting upon a rock.

“Hmm? What kind of question is that?” spoke the otter. 

Crouching with one knee in the tall green dancing blades, “It’s a question like any other question,” they leaned forward, seemingly intrigued by something.

“I think death is something natural, to be embraced rather than feared.” The otter hopped down from its warm resting place, picking up a tiny rice-paper lantern and tossing the round green leaf of a water lily upon his crown.

“Something to look forward to!” Cried the Xaela gleefully, reaching toward the ground.

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Well, why not?” with palms together, the Xaela spun at the waist, revealing a butterfly resting, wings nearly flat and barely moving.

“It’s the end. Why look forward to the end of something?” The otter inquired as he climbed their shoulder to get a closer look, peering over at the serene expression on their white-flecked face as they rose to their feet.

“Every end is a beginning to something new.”  
With a sharp, unexpected breeze, the beautiful insect was carried off into its next life.

🍃🏮🍃🏮🍃

Fins expanding from their calves, forearms, shoulders, and spine, they leapt from the edge of the cliff, silky cyprinoid tail undulating as they fell, like discarded silk scarf in the wind.

“Vachidei!” The otter wailed, darting to the edge of the cliff, nearly falling off the edge himself, and inquiring with a sigh, “Oh, why would you do that?”

“Just as I do anything,” spoke the Xaela, flat on their back in the waters below, pale blue eyes glittering with glee as the mid-day sun glittered same onto the lake’s surface, “to see what would happen!”

🍃🏮🍃🏮🍃

“Hey! Give that back!” Snapped the otter with outstretched paws, furrowing his brows at the Xaela loomed above him with a playful expression on their face.

“Why do you carry a lantern, and shield your eyes from the sun?” teased the young Xaela, dangling a small lantern from their hand.

“The sun doesn’t exist at night, you know, and rain is a thing!” He muttered, stomping towards his companion and scaling their scaled leg as they bent their elbow, bringing the lantern to the side of their face just as the otter reached their shoulder.

“Then why do you shield your eyes at night?” they asked, facetiously, exchanging the lantern for the lilypad upon their partner’s head and placing it upon their own, “--and you’re an otter!”

The old otter grew weary with the harmless bullying, “I do what I do, why do you ask so many questions!?”

The Xaela squinted, pulling the corners of their mouth with a giggle, “You just answered that.”

🍃🏮🍃🏮🍃

Hopping to his hind paws in shock, the otter remarked to his Au Ri companion, “Chi! Your scales look completely different today!” With a deep inhale, Vachidei rubbed their eyes and turned to their partner, coughing, muttering groggily, “Quan, if we woke up tomorrow and I was a completely different person, what would you do?”

“Hmph,” the otter looked to the sun rising on the horizon, painting it shades of hydrangea, “I’d question whether or not you’ve been replaced by an imposter!”

The Xaela rose to their feet, shirtless as they always were, twisting at the spine with a hand on each hip to crack their back. They stretched their slender but toned arms to the sky, “But don’t we all change, woven by the thread of our experiences?”

“Sometimes, I think your thread has knots.”

🍃🏮🍃🏮🍃

“Ah! But how will you live forever if you don’t leave an impression worth talking about?” cheered Vachidei from the awning above the entrance to the Carline Canopy, gazing down upon several concerned Gridanians and one particularly disgruntled old otter.

🍃🏮🍃🏮🍃

Dzo leather boots struck the ground as a wisp of blue darted through the grass, a small frame throwing itself onto the shoulders of a statuesque Xaela man, sitting at the edge of a small pond. “Ganbataar! Why do you sit still like that!” spoke the child, curiosity seemingly an afterthought to the playfulness of the question.

“It’s called meditation, little Chi.” Spoke the man, interrupted but unfazed by the young Xaela’s rudeness. He reached a hand back, stroking the undulations of their long, azure hair as they spoke again, less energetic, “Well it doesn’t look very fun.”

Ganbataar shook his head, holding the child’s wrists--so small in his grip they may as well be twigs-- and rose to his feet, “It isn’t supposed to be fun.”

“If something doesn’t make you feel deeply, what’s even the point?” The child asked with a sigh, closing their eyes as they learned their head forward, next to the man’s riding horns.

“You don’t need adrenaline to feel deeply. You simply sit, and focus on a concept.”

“My mind is always racing, how do you manage?”

“You don’t hold onto those distractions.”

The young Vachidei slid down, landing on their feet and stepping beside the man twice their height, “That sounds difficult, how can I not hold them when they’ve been put in my hands?” as if trying to show the man what she mant, the child kneeled, cupping water from the pond in their hands.

“Water does not remain in your hands when you choose to lay them flat, only when you cup them. Hold the water, then flatten your palms and free it.” And with his suggestion, they flattened their palms and spread their fingers, sending the liquid back into the bond.

“You’re so weird, Ganbataar!” Giggled the child.

“You’ll understand one day.”

🍃🏮🍃🏮🍃

Visions of thunder rattled the grey matter, flesh striking flesh, loud words exchanged between warring thoughts. A typhoon of emotions ripped trees from the ground and broke their branches. Vachidei opened their eyes, fists clenched in their lap, knees bent, a scarred Hellsguard took on a similar position on the zabuton across from theirs.

“I was like you once, a portrait of anger and resentment, painted of many pigments. Those pigments were made from a mixture of my experiences.” The Xaela remarked softly, closing their eyes and inhaling once more.

“Paintings are regarded as a way to preserve memories, aren’t they?” Quan inquired, stepping into the room of the small treehouse cabin, dodging a variety of plants and empty ceramic planters along the way.

The otter approached a dusty old canvas leaning against the wall tucked beside a desk, holding his lantern to an unfinished portrait of a man, painted by the hand of someone clearly inexperienced, and abandoned for just those reasons. Vachidei’s eyes opened again, running over the discarded art and the many shapes faded into it from days of sun making its way into the window opposite the desk, “Ah, yes Quan, but when left in the sun, they can fade, and likewise, if you’re not satisfied, with a little time and effort you can wash over the canvas and paint something new,” the Xaela’s gaze returned to the Roe woman, who proceeded to ask, “But what if you don’t like what you’ve painted? What of those without talent?”

“Practice! And learn to not be so hard on yourself!”

🍃🏮🍃🏮🍃

The sand-skinned Seeker watched the sea-skinned Xaela, mimicking every movement, but quicker and with an air of ferocity.

“Too harsh!” cried Vachidei.

“But isn’t that the point? I learned everything I know from master Raquel!” Sena grunted in frustration, folding her arms to her chest.

“Master Raquel’s style is nothing like what you’re learning here. I’m not teaching you to use your body to harm, I’m teaching you to use your mind to heal, and your body is simply the physical outlet for that healing.”

🍃🏮🍃🏮🍃

“Miss Vachidei,” the otter addressed with a bow.  
Chi shook their head, requesting gently, “Please don’t call me miss.”  
“Mister, then?”  
“No.”  
“Oh? What shall I call you?”

“I am me, I am Chi. To call me by anything else would be to assign me an expectation of that label.” The Xaela kneeled to take a sitting position beside Quan, playing with the beaded braids, shells, and feathers adorning their hair.

“What about Ejinn?”  
“I am of the Ejinn.”

“Does that mean you fit the expectations of an Ejinn?” Asked the otter, setting his lamp between them and sprawling back lazily.

Chi raised their forearms, expanding the scaley fins, “See these? I was raised beneath the seas. There are some roles you cannot change simply by willing it.”  
“But doesn’t that mean you’re also a woman?” The otter clearly had no intention of insulting the Xaela-- it was just commonplace for their conversations to take on a simple back-and-forth of harmless curiosity, and this was only their second time meeting.

Returning their arms to their sides, Chi spoke again, “In my youth, I was told I was unfit as a woman because I could not bear children nor had I the softness to raise them. I was told I was unfit as a man because I was the shape of a woman. What then, did that make me?”

The otter looked out to the sprawling plains before them, then up to the starry sky, it was clear he had no response.

“These fins, my lungs. I was born to swim with the deep-water Ejinn, but to fulfill the roles of male or female is a decision I was born to make myself, and I chose neither!”

“You are you; you are Chi!”  
“As you are you, Quan!”

🍃🏮🍃🏮🍃

Quan blinked with befuddlement as he watched the young Xaela, laughing gleefully as they arranged river stones into a large happy face in the sand of the ruby shoreline, he shook his head, “You’re an odd creature, Vachidei.”

“Ah! But I survive.”  
“Sometimes, I wonder how.”  
“I weigh the odds against the oddities, and I tip the scales.”

Quan sighed a defeated breath.

🍃🏮🍃🏮🍃

Raquel threw a towel over her shoulder, leaning forward, then back in a stretch, “Master Chi, how come you never stay in one place?”

“There are so many things to see in this world, Raquel, you should know as well as I do,” Chi extended one leg forward, moving their hands into position. 

“But don’t you get tired and want to settle down?”

They exchanged blows, the Xaela expertly blocking the Hyur woman’s kick with a downward thrust of their arm, palm flattened like a knife, “Does the river ever stop flowing? No, only when it is dried up.”

🍃🏮🍃🏮🍃

Peeling the drenched locks away from their face, the Au Ra stepped forward, their feet consumed by the opaque brown waters of the rapid stream, “When it rains, the mud mixes into the river.” 

“It’s hard to see what’s in it.” The otter added to the Xaela’s obvious observation.  
“Yes! Just like with people.”   
“How so?” Quan inquired with a paw on his chin.

“Sometimes it pours so hard, our clarity becomes muddled…” The tone of their voice softened with their expression, eyelids dropping slightly, “...even a little while after the rain stops.”

🍃🏮🍃🏮🍃

“I think… I understand now…”  
“Understand what?” Asked the otter as he swam beside the Xaela, naked and waist-deep in the crystal blue lake.  
Chi laughed, cupping the water in their hands before letting it flow back down. Over and over again, laughing harder each time.

🍃🏮🍃🏮🍃

Late winter sun poured warm rays over the steppe, Chi and Quan sat in the shade beneath a tree on a high outcropping, watching as the Dzo wandered, looking for scarce patches to graze. “I once believed everything I did, said, felt, and knew was simply my nature, spoke the Xaela.

Quan quickly turned his attention to them, adjusting his leafy hat, “So what caused you to change?”

Chi leaned back, resting on their palms and inhaling deeply, recalling their adolescence, thrill-seeking adventure, taking risks knowing the potential costs, countless times they’ve been caressed in death’s arms. “I made the decision to...” their eyes affixed to the Dzo, hunting for any green they could find, “...When the animal finds that food is scarce and it can no longer sustain itself, it makes the decision to look elsewhere.”

“What if it doesn’t find food elsewhere?”  
“Maybe it isn’t looking in the right places.”  
“But how does it know where the right places are?”  
“Everyone knows, they just choose to ignore their instinct.”

🍃🏮🍃🏮🍃

Deep beneath the waters, a blue-speckled white fish tail undulated as the Xaela kicked their legs, accompanied by an otter. Drawing a crudely crafted spear, Vachidei jabbed it into a school of fish with one quick thrust, pulling it back to take a look at the three fish skewered on its tip.

Breaking the water’s surface, the Au Ra and otter looked at each other, and smiled. That night, under the stars of a clear sky, polluted by no artificial lights, they made a fire on a small island in the Ruby Sea, grilling their day’s prize over a fire.

“Vachidei, are you ever lonely?” asked the otter, gazing into the dancing fire.  
Chi quickly flipped all four fish, “Hm? But I have you here, Quan!”  
“I’m just an old, well-traveled otter. What of your friends? Family? Lovers?”

Shaking their head, the Xaela put two fish upon one stone slab, and one upon the other, pulling some jars from the pockets of their loose-fitting linen pants, “I’ve had some.”  
“Oh? Where are they?”  
“Somewhere out there. What of yours?” After cutting and garnishing their dinner, Chi placed the single fish in front of their companion, who proceeded to dig in without hesitation, “They’ve all passed on, or passed me by. I am old, after all.”

“Are you ever lonely, Quan?”  
“Sometimes, but I guess you’re right-- we have each other.”

Chi stood, holding the stone plate in both palms as they turned their head to observe the nearby tree, alone on its island and surrounded by nothing but sea for miles, but baring a pair of nests made from twigs and flotsam, “The solitary tree is simply happy with the birds that sing from its branches.”

🍃🏮🍃🏮🍃

A splash as the Xaela fell to their knees in the shallow stream, lips tightly shut, chest moving ever so slightly, struggling. Quan raced through the water to meet his companion, “Vachidei! Are you alright!?”

They Xaela regained their composure, pounding their bare chest twice with a deep inhale and coughing, a pained half-grin, and dark bags beneath their eyes.

“I’ve died a thousand times in my life, Quan, what’s another death, but another beginning?”  
“Oh, Chi…”


End file.
